JISCMail - ESOL-RESEARCH Archives

I agree with Linda - we need to think about our approach here. The initial issue we had in Hackney, (Adult Learning Services) where the Roma population is predominantly Polish, was that of engagement - we had almost no Roma students in our ESOL classes. Working alongside Hackney Homes (who had a Roma support worker) and the Traveller Education Service (also part of the local education authority) we ran a specific course to try to meet the needs of the community. Attached is an article I wrote on it for Adults Learning in case of interest.

We did have an issue with retention - moves back and forth to Poland, ill healh etc. - but some of the learners did progress on to 'mainstream' ESOL classes the following year - and recruited other family members too! (I am on sabbatical leave this year so I am afraid I don't about progression beyond this, or new enrolments for 2013-14, sorry).

Alice

Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 23:49:24 +0000
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fw: Do you have Roma students?
To: [log in to unmask]

On Monday, 25 November 2013, 23:47, linda duckenfield <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

This is leading us into the same kind of dilemmas as every school with high ESOL needs, except that ESOL is our business, and not EFL. Polish immigrants are often highly literate and academic, and boost our success rates enormously, (in my experience) as they are delightfully easy to teach including even with EFL materials.

And now the obverse, Roma students will almost certainly have been discriminated against educationally in their home countries. If they dent our success rates we should just see this as an interesting challenge, be prepared to make the necessary political arguments, and if retention is an issue really look at how inclusive, welcoming and appropriate our courses are. Don't for heavens sake let's start blaming the Roma.

On Monday, 25 November 2013, 18:56, S.Macdonald <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

YES!!!

I've no time just at this minute to write in detail but will gladly correspond with others who are including learners from these backgrounds - ours come mainly from Slovakia and we've been seeing this for about 3-4 years.

I'm working now on trying to unpick the various obstacles to learning that these groups are experiencing, which include illiteracy, interrupted schooling, poor physical health, lack of experience of being in study situations, quite a high occurrence of what appear to be learning differences such as dyslexia and problems associated with long term unemployment and very poor job prospects locally (in east Kent).

I'll discuss with our manager who may want to write to you directly but I'll write more later about the impact on our classes and what we're trying to do here.

Regards

Sheila Macdonald EdD, ESOL researcher and tutor

On 25/11/2013 16:14, Peter Griffiths wrote:

At Bolton College we’ve had a huge increase in the number of Roma students enrolling on our ESOL courses. Most of these come from Hungary but we also have some from Czech Republic and Slovakia. Last year we had almost 400 enrolments by Roma learners.

Unfortunately, this has hammered our success rates. Overall success rates for Roma are around 65% compared to 83% for non-Roma.

I’d be very interested to compare notes with any other providers who have had this issue. Which countries have they come from? What kind of volumes? Are you having problems with retention like us ? What actions are you taking to try and tackle these problems.

Thanks

Peter

(Head of Essential Skills, Bolton College)

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*********************************** ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds. To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html A quick guide to using Jiscmail lists can be found at: http://jiscmail.ac.uk/help/using/quickuser.htm To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask]